Too much information can harm resume

October 15, 2012|Tribune Media Services

Like those boxes in the garage waiting for your attention, your resume may be filled with all sorts of good things. It's just that employers may never be able to truly see all you have to offer because of the unnecessary clutter.

Today's job hunters should add one important task to your to-do list: create a concise resume filled with useful, relevant information that will convince employers to give you a call.

"Your resume is an advertisement, not an autobiography," said Susan Whitcomb, career coach and author of "Resume Magic: Trade Secrets of a Professional Resume Writer" (JIST Works, $18.95). "You have to make sure to keep it filled with items that accentuate your strengths."

Here are some tips to help get rid of the clutter.

Throw out the trash: Show off recent accomplishments. If you have held the same job for several years, don't include a rote description of what your job duties once were. Instead, highlight important accomplishments – each innovation, improvement and achievement you collected through your years of experience.

"We need to show what we did to creatively do our job, outside the basic job description," said Anne McKinney, managing editor of Prep Publishing and author of the "Real Resume" series of resume advice books. "Tell the employer what you did to cut a cost or improve profitability or serve customers better."

Recycle: Highlight your signature strengths. If you are looking for a job in a new field, highlight the skills you gained in past experiences that are applicable to the new job.

"If you're changing careers from education to pharmacy sales representative, for example, focus on the fact that you have excellent communication skills," Whitcomb said. "Communication skills, organization skills and time management are always relevant."

Check expiration dates: If you took training session in COBOL back when Nando.net ruled the web, the time has come to wipe it off your resume. However, do include recent training. A listing of educational accomplishments should always stay on your resume, too but the dates when you received them don't have to. The same goes for notable employment experiences more than a couple decades old.

"Older workers may not want to give all their dates – if it goes back to the 1970s or even the 1980s, summarize the highlights but be vague about when they happened," McKinney said.

Clear your calendar: Job hunters also should avoid looking too young – a trap that recent college graduates easily could fall into. According to Whitcomb, these resume writers make the common mistake of listing every job experience they have ever had. Whitcomb advises highlighting those experiences relevant to a current job search and only briefly mentioning the others.

"If it's not relevant to the employers, summarize it by using something that says ‘Financed education through work, managed my time and my priorities well,'" she said. High school and college leadership experiences also can be summarized with the same kind of sentence that invites curiosity without making you look too young.